City schools mandate livestreaming of classes
STAMFORD — In an effort to beef up instruction for students during their at-home days, the Stamford school district will mandate that all teachers livestream classes.
Currently, students in the district’s hybrid teaching model go to class every other day, and are assigned work to complete from home on the days they are not in the building. Students in the remote learning “academy,” on the other hand, receive some live instruction every day.
Some Stamford parents of children in the hybrid program have expressed frustration over the lack of virtual face-to-face instruction for their children on their days at home, which they say feel mostly like homework for their kids.
Associate Superintendent Amy Beldotti said the district has recently been focused on getting more live instruction to at-home students. Now that the district has enough devices to cover all students, and all teachers have the necessary technology, live instruction will be a requirement, Beldotti said.
“We have been working with the teachers and administrators in moving forward with looking at our at-home learning days and how we can enhance them knowing that livestreaming is one tool that can be used by teachers to provide instruction,” she said during a meeting of the Board of Education’s Teaching and Learning Committee Tuesday night.
Associate Superintendent Michael Fernandes said he expects teachers will be livestreaming over the course of the next few weeks. “We encourage teachers to use livestreaming intentionally to achieve their instructional goals and to meet the standards they are trying to teach,” he said.
That doesn’t mean students will be tuned into classroom instruction all day. Fernandes said livestreaming will be sprinkled into a student’s at-home school day, which will still include completing assignments.
“We believe a mix of both of these strategies is important for at home learning days,” he said.
The livestreaming will be provided through Google Meet, and the expectation for teachers is that they provide students a schedule of livestreamed classes at least 48 hours beforehand. Those lessons also will be recorded and made available to students to watch later, Fernandes said.
Student attendance will be taken for the streamed classes.
During the committee meeting Tuesday, Fernandes showed a couple of videos of Stamford teachers already using technology to provide instruction to students online and in the classroom.
In one video, a teacher is sitting in front of a desktop computer facing online students, while the images of those students is projected on a Promethean Board, an interactive display screen. In that setup, students in the classroom can see the online students, but the online students can only see the teacher.
In another setup, a teacher placed an open Chromebook facing the classroom children so that the students at home could see them, while the online students were projected on a screen.
Members of the committee had trouble hearing the video, and had mixed reactions.
“Technology is great and it’s nice when we can use it to adapt to our needs, but this kind of illustrates some of the challenges that you face dealing with synchronous learning in real time, but you also see where it has an opportunity to really expand instruction,” said Jennienne Burke, chairperson of the committee.